


Out of Time

by Aintfraidanoghosts



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bad Wolf, Declarations Of Love, F/M, First Time, Romance, Snogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21977833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aintfraidanoghosts/pseuds/Aintfraidanoghosts
Summary: The Doctor works frantically to save Rose after accidentally exposing her to a deadly alien virus.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 26
Kudos: 194





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrsbertucci](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsbertucci/gifts).



> Here is my secret Santa work for the incredible mrsbertucci! I hope you enjoy it, darling! This is based on one of her prompts and I’m toying with adding another chapter... we’ll see where the muse takes me!
> 
> TenRoseForeverandEver, as always, makes me a better writer and hell, a better PERSON! She rocks! KISSES!

The Doctor had faced down death more times than he could count in the roughly 900 years of his existence. He’d been beaten, tortured, viciously attacked, both physically and telepathically, and he’d faced down despots that were madder than a Gorbacheet at the peak of mating season. He’d looked into the Untempered Schism at only 8 years old and had condemned his entire planet to burn at the press of a button.

Despite all he had seen, all he had done, and all that he had overcome in his long life, the Doctor had never been more terrified than he was in this very moment.

He twined his fingers with Rose’s and a wave of nausea swept through him when they didn’t instinctively tighten around his. They were pale and motionless, exactly like the rest of her. Feeling helpless, he pressed his forehead against their joined hands. He hated everything that was happening around him: the IV continuously pumping fluids and antiviral drugs into her system; the slow beeping of her heart monitor; and the uncharacteristic, unnerving _stillness_ of his usually dynamic companion.

He sucked in a shuddering breath, pressing his lips briefly to her hand before standing to inspect her IV site and ensuring the monitor leads were still properly connected to the sticky electrodes. Her vitals had been slowly dropping all day, her respiration slow but still steady, and all he could do at this point was hope that Rose wasn’t so far gone that the antiviral cocktail he’d managed to cobble together could bring her back to him.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, reminded once again how his rubbish driving had managed to get them in this mess in the first place.

******

_The previous day_

“You’re going to _love_ this, Rose!” he told her as they exited the TARDIS, hand-in-hand. “This festival is revered throughout the galaxy as the ultimate gathering spot for more species than you can imagine. It’s like an intergalactic Pride parade, Rose! Thousands and thousands of years after the first Pride rally in New York, 1970...”

He rambled on a bit about the historical significance of the first rallies in the 1970’s as they walked, mainly to keep Rose beaming that beauteous grin at him, the one she always gave him when he was being particularly brilliant. They made it to the center of town right as he finished the history lesson. He _did_ have perfect timing, after all.

“So when’s this festival, then?” Rose asked, glancing around the nearly empty town square.

“Huh,” he replied, pulling away from Rose to spin around 360 degrees, taking in the surprisingly few people out and about, all of them native to the planet judging by their nearly white-gray hair and skin the color of milky coffee. They were hurrying through their errands and wearing old-fashioned (to the natives at least) surgical masks. “Supposed to be today, the equivalent of mid-June on Earth. But... no one is here! No Andalorians, no Pavlonians, not even a bloody Slitheen stinking up the place!” He started to wander around, pulling out his sonic to take any readings he could. He ran it over the non-functioning fountain, the elaborate map to various town landmarks, and the statue of the town founder. Nothing he could see indicated anything was amiss, and yet...

“This doesn’t make _sense_ ,” he muttered. “There should be tents and vendors and booths and food trucks! Thousands of people from thousands of species should be descending on this very town square! Where _is_ everyone?”

“ _Doctor_!” Rose screeched. He whipped his head around just in time to see Rose catch a swooning native. He jogged over quickly and made it to the pair just as Rose lowered the young female to the ground. “We were just talking and she... collapsed! What’s wrong with her?”

“I dunno,” he admitted, running the sonic over the young girl to try and get some diagnostics from her. “Hello, I’m the Doctor and this is Rose. Can you hear me?”

“Y-yes,” she was able to choke out, followed by a brief coughing fit. The Doctor cringed when her hand came away sprayed with droplets of blood.

“What’s your name?” Rose asked, trying to sit her up.

“Maranatha,” the young girl wheezed.

The Doctor checked the read-out on the sonic and all the blood drained out of his face. “Rose,” he stated, trying to keep his tone as low and even as possible. “Get back to the TARDIS.”

“What?” Rose protested as she tried to tug Maranatha to her feet. “No chance! She needs help, Doctor! We have to get her to a hospital!”

“Rose,” he pleaded, grasping onto her arm as she met his gaze. He tried to let his eyes convey everything he couldn’t say... how essential she was to his very existence, the absolute terror he felt at the mere thought of her coming to harm, and how he _needed_ her to listen to him, just this once. “Please...”

Rose’s face softened, and he felt his tense muscles relax infinitesimally as she nodded at him and helped Maranatha to her feet. He wrapped an arm around the young girl’s waist and situated hers around his shoulder. She was practically dead weight on him, as weak as she was, but he was stronger than he looked and would be able to get her safely to the hospital.

“You’ll be all right?” Rose asked him, her voice soft.

“Don’t you worry about me, Rose Tyler,” he replied. “I’ll be a couple of hours, max. Go straight to the TARDIS, yeah? No detours?”

“No detours,” she agreed before reaching over to squeeze his free hand. 

He sighed in relief once Rose was out of sight and, with a glance at the town map, began heading towards the hospital.

******

True to his word, the Doctor had arrived back at the TARDIS just a hair under two hours later. Maranatha had been immediately whisked into the infectious disease unit while the Doctor had refused their offers of “decontamination.” He was immune to the fast-moving virus that was currently running rampant through their society, as he was to most illnesses. 

Rose, however, was not.

The TARDIS, wonderful ship that she was, destroyed most airborne or surface viruses and bacteria as soon as anyone walked into the ship. Along the same vein, she provided necessary aerosol inoculations to all of the passengers simply via the air they breathed in. The problem with this virus was that it mutated, like the common cold but was much, _much_ more severe. When it attached to the victim’s cells, it used the information from their genetic material to mutate into a slightly different version each time, which made it impossible to inoculate against and incredibly difficult to treat.

The inhabitants of this planet had had some time to build up immunity, so while many would get sick, only those who were immunocompromised would be at serious risk of death. Rose, on the other hand, and her silly human immune system, were at great risk and he wasn’t willing to put her in danger. He knew how much she hated him telling her to stay put in the TARDIS and wait, but he was grateful for her relatively easy compliance today.

He stripped off his overcoat and suit jacket before placing a hand on the console, silently asking his ship where he could find Rose. An image of her bedroom door appeared in his mind. Loosening his tie as he walked, he made the short trip to Rose’s room and gently tapped against the metal.

“Rose?” he asked. “I’m back now. Are you all right?”

She didn’t reply, and his hearts picked up speed as every possible dangerous scenario ran through his mind. _Relax_ , he told himself. _She’s probably just asleep._ He knocked harder. “Rose? Maranatha is going to be fine, thought you’d want to know. Rose?”

Again, nothing came from the other side, and his hearts-rate rocketed. He tugged on the door handle and it slid open easily. He let out a breath of relief upon seeing Rose curled up under her comforter and facing away from him, the movement around her rib cage indicating her rate of respiration was normal, if not a hair on the slow side, for humans. His tense muscles relaxed, just a bit. Rose could sleep through a hurricane, and often had, so he really had no reason to worry.

“Rose?” He said again, keeping his voice soft so he didn’t jolt her awake. He made his way over to the bed and sat down on the corner before reaching an arm over to place a gentle touch on her shoulder.

Even through the material of her t-shirt, he could tell that her skin was _far_ too warm.

“Doctor,” she managed to croak out before turning on her side to face him. His eyes went wide at her flushed cheeks, her half-lidded, tired eyes, and the wince on her face as she stretched out an arm towards him. “I don’t feel so good...”

The Doctor was gripped by panic all over again as she lost consciousness right in front of him.

******

He’d immediately gone into “doctor” mode, picking Rose up and whisking her to the infirmary. He’d hooked her up to an IV fluid drip and drawn a small vial of blood so he could identify the mutation of the virus and create the proper cocktail of antivirals that would save her. Rose had remained unconscious as he worked at a feverishly to help her. 

He’d discovered three hours into his research that the combinations of antivirals Rose required would react together to produce a compound that was severely toxic to humans. He would need to find the proper stabilizing agents to make them safe to administer. This meant at least twelve hours of trial and error that they didn’t have to spare, and the delay meant that the virus had had plenty of time to attack all of her major organ systems.

By the time he was able to safely administer the antivirals, Rose’s vital signs were steadily declining and her fever was near dangerous levels. He was terrified the long delay meant that the virus had progressed too far for the medication to catch up, that he wouldn’t be able to save her.

In the six hours since he’d _finally_ hooked Rose up to the intravenous medication, she had yet to show any signs of improvement, and the Doctor was starting to lose hope.

With nothing else to do while the infusion ran, he simply sat on a stool next to the gurney and waited. He held Rose’s hand and talked to her, told her stories about his childhood on Gallifrey and some of his previous companions. He told her all about Sarah Jane and the adventures they’d had, and even poked fun at some of his old fashion choices (“Celery, Rose! Just a stick of celery right on my lapel. No one could convince me otherwise, I thought it was completely _brilliant_ of course! Mind you, I was a bit fit in that body... nothing like _now_ , of course...”)

He must have drifted off at some point, probably mid-babble, because an alarm from the IV pole startled him awake, informing him that the infusion was now complete. He switched off the machine and began prepping another round of the medication when Rose let out a shuddering breath, and the warning beeps from her heart monitor initiated an alarm that meant her heart rate and oxygen had now hit critical levels.

“No, no, _no_!” he howled. “No, Rose, hold on! You have to hold on!” He pulled on his specs, nearly poking an eye out in his haste, and let his eyes quickly scan the monitor before sinking back onto the stool.

Her oxygen levels were steadily dropping now, her blood pressure had dipped to a dangerous level, and her respiration _far_ too slow. The monitor showed her heart rate had dropped down to twenty beats per minute, and he placed his fingers against her brachial artery to assess the quality of her pulse. It was thready and weak, nothing like the solid, reassuring thrum of life he always felt when his thumb brushed over her pulse point. He scrubbed his hands over his face as his brain worked frantically to come up with another solution, but, as much as he railed and denied the truth, the virus was too far gone. Even if he intubated her and had a machine help her breathe, it wouldn’t stop her body from shutting down. She was heading towards multi-system organ failure, and even _he_ couldn’t reverse it.

He was going to lose her.

Quite suddenly, his legs weren’t able to hold the weight of him and he dropped back onto the stool alongside the gurney. He reached over to grasp onto her hand once again, fighting to keep his own from shaking. He pushed a stray lock of hair off her pale, clammy forehead and let out a shuddering breath. He could feel the lump rising in his throat and the tears threatening to fall as he began to speak. “I’m sorry, Rose,” he stammered as he cupped her cheek. “I’m sorry I did this to you. If it wasn’t for me you’d be living a quiet little life with your mum and Mickey and not dying in my infirmary.” He willed back the tears that pricked his eyes. “I’m going to lose you.”

His voice cracked at the last words, and he paused a moment to take in his Rose... his brave, compassionate, _wonderful_ Rose. She’d swung (quite literally) into the lowest point in his life and taught him how to be happy again. She’d brought light into his dark existence and he didn’t know how he would go on without her by his side, holding his hand, and keeping him sane.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said. “I hope you can, because this next bit is very, _very_ important. I thought, when it came to us, that it was all right to just carry on as always. I’d convinced myself that you already knew, that it didn’t need saying. But as it looks like this is my last chance...” He drew in another deep breath and let his gaze settle on her face, trying to replace the unsettling stillness and her grey-tinged skin with an image of her glorious smile, her cheeks bright pink with excitement and her brown eyes sparkling.

“I love you,” he whispered the last bit before his head dropped to the gurney and his allowed the tears to fall.

He was so awash in the waves of grief threatening to overtake him that he didn’t notice the heat building under Rose’s skin until it caused a real physical pain to shoot through the hand covering hers. His head shot up from the gurney as he glared at the offending appendage, his eyes still blurred from his tears. It wasn’t until Rose’s heart monitor began beeping frantically that he looked up and noticed her body emanating an all too familiar golden glow.

Instinctively, he leaped back before the glow intensified, engulfing her completely, and her body burst into flame.

He shielded his eyes in disbelief. His frankly magnificent brain practically shut down, stuttering like a broken record as the fire seemed to go on forever and filled the infirmary. He was helpless as he watched the woman he loved burn in what looked suspiciously like the fires of regeneration... no matter how _impossible_ that was.

Rose was human, she couldn’t regenerate.

Yet, here she was....

It was really only a few seconds before the last of the flames escaped from her fingertips, but it felt like the longest hours of his life. Immediately, Rose launched herself up into a sitting position, gasping for breath. She looked almost exactly the same as before, except that her hair was now a darker shade of brown instead of blonde, and it somehow made her even more breathtaking than ever. 

Then again, that also could have been simply because she was gloriously and miraculously _alive_.

“What happened?” she asked as she patted down her torso to check for injuries. She frowned at the heart monitor leads coming off her chest. “Why am I in the infirmary? Doctor, are you here?” When her gaze finally fell on him, the smile that stretched out across her face made his knees buckle beneath him. “Oh, my God, your hair looks _ridiculous!_ ”

The tinkling giggle she let out was what broke him out of his stunned silence. In three strides, he had crossed the room and clutched her tight in his arms.

“Blimey,” she murmured against his shirt as she hugged him right back. “If that’s the reaction I get when I insult your hair, remind me to do it more often!”

The Doctor chuckled weakly before pulling back and framing her face in his hands. “Rose,” he breathed out in awe. “I... I can’t believe it...”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, her arms still wrapped securely around his neck. “What happened? Is Maranatha okay?”

“Oh, yes! Fine, brilliant, _molto bene_!” He pulled her face towards him and pressed their foreheads together. He breathed in through his nose and let her beloved scent wash over him. “ _You_ , however, Rose Tyler... you gave me quite a scare.”

“I did?” She pulled her head back and stared at him. “Why? What happened?”

He let out another breathless laugh, certain he sounded completely mad, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. “I’ll tell you later. I have something far, _far_ more important to say right now... something that can’t wait, something that I should have said a long, _long_ time ago and not just when you were dying in my arms and I thought I would lose you forever... but now you’re here and oh, _so_ alive and doing six impossible things before breakfast...”

“Doctor,” Rose interrupted with a soft smile and a hand on his chest, “whatever it is, just say it.”

He grinned at her. “Rose Tyler,” he began before cupping her face in his hands once more. “I love you.”

Rose’s face lit up with her answering grin. “I know _that_ , you daft idiot. I’ve known that for _ages_. And you know what?” Rose’s hands moved from their spots on his chest and around his neck to thread into his hair. “I love you, too.”

The Doctor let her pull him into a kiss and he felt like he could fly. Her lips slotted perfectly against his, she was warm and alive, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care _how_ at that moment. 

All of that could wait.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It may have taken me a few months, but I’m back with chapter two that was going through my head!
> 
> Please note the rating change!
> 
> TenRoseForeverandEver rocks the beta world!

This whole feeling was new to him. Certainly, he’d felt affection towards his companions in the past. He’d even _danced_ more than once in his 900-plus years of life, but this newfound obsession with _kissing_ was completely new to him and, quite frankly, completely brilliant as well.

He brushed his lips everywhere he could reach, over her eyelids and cheekbones, across her forehead and down her jawline. He wanted to catalog every inch of Rose’s skin with his lips and tongue, and this single-minded focus was causing his magnificent brain to fog over embarrassingly quickly.

He placed an open-mouthed kiss on the pulse point on her neck and darted out his tongue to taste the soft, salty skin there. At the sound of Rose’s blissful moan, he wrenched himself away with no small amount of difficulty. He knew that if he let things go much further, nothing short of his ship falling apart around him would be enough to make him stop.

“Sorry,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against hers as they both fought to catch their breath. “I shouldn’t... How are you feeling? Do you need anything? Water? Food?”

“I’m fine,” Rose told him. “I feel... fantastic, actually. Whatever you have running in this IV is a bloody miracle.”

The Doctor chuckled. “The only miracle around here is you, Rose. You don’t understand. You should be _dead_ right now. The virus...” He shook his head, as if to dislodge the awful image of her lifeless form from his mind. “By all accounts you shouldn’t be here. Yet...”

“Here I am,” she murmured. “I dunno what to tell you. I just remember it being dark, and cold, and then I heard this _singing_ , and there was a golden light, and then, all of a sudden, I was awake...”

The Doctor stared at her as realization dawned on her face. “Bad Wolf,” she murmured.

“Sorry?”

“Bad Wolf,” she repeated. “At the Game Station, when I took in the heart of the TARDIS and we came back to save you...”

“No,” he gasped, shaking his head. “No, I took it out of you. It’s gone.”

“I just remember,” she went on, completely ignoring him, “thinking that beyond everything else, I didn’t want you to be alone. _Ever_. I told you before, Doctor, I’m not leaving you. And I think... the TARDIS helped to make that happen.”

“Oh, Rose,” he breathed out, trying to balance his feelings of absolute horror and complete joy. “I didn’t want this for you. A longer life isn’t always a better life.”

“Better with two though, yeah?” Rose asked him with that blasted tongue-touched grin that he loved so completely, his balance of feelings tipping towards “complete joy,” as the possibilities this afforded them raced through his mind.

He felt his own lips stretch happily in response. “Yeah,” he agreed, sweeping in for another kiss. “Better with two.”

It was a testament to Rose’s spectacular kissing skills that he didn’t whisk her over to an exam table to begin a barrage of tests on her DNA, genetic structure, and cellular decay. Instead, he pushed everything to the back of his brain... _well_ , everything except the feeling of her lips on his, the way they slotted together so perfectly, and the delicious jolts of pleasure that were settling in his abdomen.

“Blimey,” he whispered when they finally pulled apart so Rose could gulp in a few breaths. “That’s quite brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Bet it could get even better,” Rose teased with her tongue tucked between her teeth. He groaned as his hands gripped at her hips, tugging them more firmly against his. They both let out a gasp as their lower halves came into contact.

“Rose,” he murmured as he leaned in again to kiss her, starting with her eyelids and working his way down her cheek, along her jaw, and down to her neck. He made his way across the neckline of her t-shirt as his hands slid up from her hips to stroke the silken skin at her waist.

“Doctor,” she replied in a breathless whisper. “Not that I’m not enjoying this but... shouldn’t we take care of these wires? I don’t fancy getting shagged attached to an IV bag either.”

It took a few seconds for his brain function to return enough for him to register what Rose was saying. He stared into her eyes as he caught up with her words. “Right! Yes, can’t have that, can we?”

Rose giggled at bit and his knees went a bit wobbly, the sound of her laughter like a symphony in his ears. He set about pulling the electrodes from her skin and tossing them haphazardly on a nearby cart. The IV he took more care with as he gently removed the dressing and pressed a cotton square against the site before pulling the catheter from her vein. 

“There,” he told her, lifting her arm and placing a gentle kiss to her inner elbow. “All better.”

He couldn’t keep his voice from cracking at the last words, and Rose reached up to cradle his cheek in her palm. “It’s all right,” she said pulling him to her and pressing her lips gently against his. “I’m here, I’m fine, yeah?”

The Doctor groaned against her mouth as he poured everything he could into the kiss: all of the despair he’d felt when he was certain he was losing her forever; all of the hope that the new revelations about her lifespan brought to him; and all of the love that his hearts held for her. He wasn’t sure if she was responding to the new voracity of his kiss or if she could somehow sense his emotions through the contact, but Rose gasped into his mouth and her fingers flew into his hair.

Nerve endings he hadn’t known existed sparked to life and he positively _whimpered_ against her lips. Now _that_... _that_ was something, wasn’t it?

She wrapped her legs around his waist and began to thread her fingers through his hair, her nails scratching deliciously against his scalp. He rocked his hips gently against hers, desperate for some relief of the pressure building there but not wanting to rush her so soon after...

Then Rose’s teeth grazed his earlobe and she breathed out a whispered expletive against his skin.

_Sod it_ , he thought, cupping his hands under her bum and lifting her into his arms. Her legs tightened around his waist and her arms around his neck, but he barely felt her weight as he steered them out of the infirmary and directly into his bedroom. The TARDIS must have connected the two rooms, and he sent the ship a brief wave of gratitude before Rose’s lips closed around his earlobe and all coherent thought flew out of his mind.

He tumbled them both onto the bed, unconcerned at the odd position they landed in because Rose’s legs remained firmly around his hips and the force of gravity caused a delicious friction in all the right places. The Doctor groaned and repeated the surge of his hips, swallowing Rose’s gasp against his mouth as he kissed her frantically once again. He didn’t separate from her even as she worked the buttons free of his Oxford. He tried to move things along more quickly, desperate for the feel of more skin-on-skin, but the garment caught at his wrists as he tried unsuccessfully to pull it off.

“Cuffs,” Rose mumbled against his mouth, the word lingering between them for a beat before the Doctor could register that she was talking.

“What?” 

“Cuffs,” she repeated, pulling back and tracing her hands down his nearly-bare arms. “You need to undo the cuffs, or your shirt won’t come off.”

He gazed down at Rose’s face, certain he could get lost in her whiskey-colored eyes. The soft lighting of his bedroom played off her lovely features, bringing out the golden flecks in her eyes and the gorgeous, soft sheen of her new, darker hair...

“Doctor...” her voice floated near his ears, bringing him back to the present.

“Right!” he stammered. “Cuffs, yes... cuffs. Got it.”

Rose giggled once again, and he vowed to have her make that sound as often as possible, especially since, only hours ago, he was convinced he would never hear it again. The thought clenched his hearts like a vice and the urge to be as close to her as possible surged through him anew. Filled with an irrepressible urgency, he yanked his arms free of the Oxford, unconcerned that the buttons were torn away from the cuffs in his haste, as he leaned in for another, desperate kiss.

Rose’s human-hot touch on his skin caused a shudder to run through his entire body. He traced his lips down her neck and along the edge of her t-shirt as his hands worked their way beneath the fabric and sought the skin of her waist one again. Rose gasped at the contact and pulled out of the kiss just long enough to reach between them and tug the flimsy cotton over her head.

The Doctor was shocked to realize how distracted he must have been when the virus had first begun to rage through Rose’s body, because in his frantic haste to connect Rose to the heart monitor, he hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her loose fitting t-shirt. He gaped at all the new skin on display, devouring the sight of her topless beneath him and burning it into his memory.

“You are... _so_ very beautiful,” he managed to whisper as his hands sought out more of her soft, creamy flesh. Rose bit her lip and closed her eyes when his hands made contact with her breasts. He was immediately enthralled with the feel of them in his hands, the soft mounds fitting perfectly against his palms as his sensitive nerve endings catalogued the shift in texture from her porcelain skin to the pink of her areola to the pebbled nipple.

Rose gasped as his hand caressed the sensitive skin, the noise shifting to a moan when he took the little nub between his thumb and forefinger, testing her responsiveness to the new stimulus. The sound shot down his spine and settled in his groin and, deciding he wanted to elicit more sounds just like that, he bent down to take her nipple in his mouth. 

Rose choked out a strangled, “Oh, _God_!” and the Doctor determined he very much liked that sound as well. 

He lavished attention back and forth between her breasts, alternating between his mouth and fingers, enjoying the way her moans escalated in pitch and her hips bucked against his with an increasing desperation. She smoothed her hands down his back and gripped onto his bum, causing him to pull away from her with a gasp. She wasted no time in taking advantage of his change in position, her nimble fingers tracing along his hipbones and settling at the straining bulge in his trousers.

“Please,” she whimpered as she stroked him. He was helpless to do anything but thrust shallowly into her hands, his breathing ragged against her neck as new and foreign sensations shot through his body. While he’d _danced_ in his past, it had never been with a companion, and never with someone he’d loved as deeply and fully as he loved Rose. Time Lords didn’t have a biological imperative to mate like humans did, and any arousal they felt usually involved a concentrated effort on their part. Rose turned out, as usual, to be the exception to the rule. In both bodies she had known, she was proving to cause involuntary reactions that he was thrilled to indulge in after resisting for so long.

In the brief time that he had been lost in her touch, Rose had undone the button and zip of his trousers. He helped her push the pinstriped fabric over his hips and down his legs, opting to kick it free rather than pull away from Rose’s neck to remove the garment with more grace. Rose gave the same treatment to her pajama bottoms. They slid away easily with their elastic waistband and loose fit. 

He pressed their bodies together and kissed her once again, the touch of all this newly exposed skin electrifying his nerve endings and making his head spin. He could feel the heat of her through the thin cotton of her knickers, the only piece of clothing left between them, and he made the quick decision that it was worth pulling out of the kiss so he could remove them properly.

He moved his mouth in a feather-light caress down her sternum and to the soft curve of her stomach, letting his lips follow the path of her knickers as he hooked his fingers into the elastic and tugged the simple scrap of material down her legs. He tossed them carelessly somewhere behind him as he sat up and took in the sight of Rose Tyler, naked and gorgeously flushed with arousal beneath him.

“Blimey,” he whispered, his voice filled with wonder as he covered her body once again with his, her legs spreading to cradle his hips between them. He kissed her, their tongues meeting in a languid caress. As their bodies shifted, his erection came in contact with her damp curls and they both gasped.

“I love you,” Rose breathed against his lips. She reached between them and grabbed onto his hardened flesh, positioning him at her entrance.

He was done for.

He pushed forward and they both groaned as he was sheathed inside her welcome heat. She hitched her hips just _so_ , urging him forward and he was helpless to deny her. Her little gasps, moans, and broken phrases encouraged his movements even as he catalogued every little response and filed away what she seemed to like best for the future. When he moved his hand between their bodies to massage her clit, it took very little time for her moans to escalate to a keening wail as she cried out his name and spasmed around him.

Seeing, hearing, and feeling Rose come apart because of _him_ was enough to make him desperate for his own release. He moved against her with deep thrusts as he let his hands wander to any part of her he could reach, peppering kisses all over her face and neck as he babbled incoherently into her skin.

He could feel the tension building as he stroked in and out of her, Rose’s moans once again intensifying as she whispered encouragements in his ear. He chased his own release and it swept through him with a ferocity he’d never experienced before. It stole away his breath, his respiratory bypass no match for the heat that coursed through his body. He vaguely registered Rose’s muscles contracting around him once again as she stuttered out his name and strained against the vice-like grip he had on her body.

It took several moments for him to realize he’d been repeating the same words to Rose since his climax had first crashed over him. His lips were pressed close to her ear and as he panted against her, he’d managed to whisper, “I love you... I love you,” more times than he was able to count with his higher brain functions currently on hiatus

Rose held him close, her own breaths calming the longer they lay in each other’s arms and her satiny-soft hands running soothingly up and down his back. She was pressing gentle kisses to his temple as she whispered back her own words of devotion and care.

It took him several more beats to realize he was trembling.

“I’m here,” Rose murmured, bringing her hands to his face and guiding him to meet her gaze. He drew in a breath at the naked adoration shining through her lovely eyes. “I’m not leaving you, yeah?”

He felt his mouth spread into a slow grin just before he dipped in and kissed her, worshipping her lips with his and trying to convey everything he felt for her that was simply too big for words. Rose kissed him back with equal fervor and he gasped as that glorious _spark_ ignited between them once again.

He pulled back and locked his eyes with hers, reaching a hand up to cup her cheek. “How long are you gonna stay with me?”

She replied, strong and sure and with no hesitation. 

“Forever.”


End file.
